


between the lines

by huphilpuffs



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Coffee Shops, M/M, Tutoring, University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-25 19:41:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17127530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huphilpuffs/pseuds/huphilpuffs
Summary: Dan's failing his English class, so Phil is enlisted to tutor him.





	between the lines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Phanfictionhoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phanfictionhoe/gifts).



“Hey Dan?”

He looks up, hands hovering halfway to his backpack. The only good part about English class so far is that he doesn’t have a textbook to carry around with him.

“Yes, sir?”

His tutor smiles, kind. 

All the staff here seem too kind. Dan kind of wishes they were scary. That would make it easier to hate them.

“Do you have a class now?”

Dan swallows. “No, sir.”

“Can we talk for a moment, then?”

He lifts his hands from his bag. Walking into his tutorial today had already been dreadful. The heavy feeling he’d been carrying in his chest since a few days ago comes back. He settles back into his seat, listening to every other student leave the room with rustling papers and loud footsteps. 

The doors at the uni are too heavy. They always fall closed with a loud thud.

His tutor comes towards him only after the last student’s left. Nathan, he told them to call him during the first tutorial. Calling people with actual PhDs by their first name still feels foreign on Dan’s tongue, though. 

He sits down across from Dan, still smiling.

“I’m sure you saw your grade on the first essay,” he says. 

Dan swallows. The pressure in his chest is worse. “Uh, yeah.”

Nathan nods. “As you know, a 36% is a failing grade.”

“I know,” says Dan. “Am I–”

He cuts himself off. Asking if he’s in trouble sounds stupid. He’s supposed to be an adult now.

Supposedly.

Nathan shakes his head. “No, you’re okay. There’ll be opportunities to bring your grade up,” he says. “Actually, the professor is working with the university to help students who are struggling. We’re trying to match students up with student tutors. Are you interested?”

He isn’t, not really. But Dan nods anyway.

Nathan smiles, again. “Okay. I’ll email you once I know the details, okay?”

Dan just nods dumbly, slumped back in his seat.

“You’re free to go,” says Nathan.

“Oh,” says Dan. He stumbles to his feet, slings his backpack over his shoulder, and rushes out the door. 

He has almost an hour left before his metaphysics lecture.

And he really needs coffee.

\---

He gets the email with the details on a Tuesday.

A few hours later, he gets another email from a guy called Phil that’s a little less formal, a little more nerdy. It’s almost enough to put Dan at ease.

He reads it sitting in his ethics tutorial, waiting for the class to start.

_ Hello, _

_ My name’s Phil and I’m going to be your tutor for ENGL10021. I’m a third year student doing English Language and Linguistics, by the way. I’ll be on campus tonight if you want to meet up. Let me know! _

_ Phil ^.^ _

\---

His brain feels numb when he leaves the tutorial. 

Ethics is confusing. His brain is all muddled. There’s an essay coming up and the thought of it has his breaths coming quicker, tighter, a little too desperate. Dan clutches the straps of his bag and rushes down the stairs, almost stumbling over his own feet.

He needs more coffee.

Not that it fixes anything.

Dan ends up at Starbucks, one near campus that’s always too full. Someone pulls the door open. Dan rushes in before it falls closed. He feels jittery. His heart’s beating too fast.

He takes two steps into the store before realizing he’s not paying attention. 

“Fucking  _ shit. _ ”

Dan blinks. He’s standing still, suddenly, and there’s a boy standing in front of him, staring with wide eyes. His shirt is stained, wet and sticking to his skin.

It takes Dan a moment to realize he’s drenched in the shit, too.

“Fuck,” he repeats. “Watch where you’re fucking going, why don’t you?”

“I–” says the boy. He looks almost defensive, but it fades into something softer. “Sorry, I will. You should, too, though.”

Bitterness flares, angry, in Dan’s chest, but he doesn’t argue. The boy lingers there for a moment. He has black hair, cutting across his forehead in a fringe that mirrors Dan’s, and his eyes are still just a little too wide.

“I, uh, have a lecture,” the boy blurts. His coffee — iced, thankfully — is half empty, the plastic lid hanging off the straw, but he doesn’t bother to fix it before leaving.

Dan leaves without getting coffee.

\---

His leg is bouncing when he sits down at the library.

The floor, Green 2 because it’s the only social one in the main library, is full of people chatting with their friends and Dan feels stupid, sitting at a table by himself. He didn’t even have time to go back to his room to pick up his English books. 

He should have gotten coffee before coming, he thinks. It’s the only thing keeping him going by this point.

“Dan?”

He jumps, swivels in his chair and–

“Fuck, please don’t say you’re Phil.”

The boy standing there offers half a smile. “Sorry to disappoint?”

Dan’s leg starts bouncing again. His chest feels too tight. He tries to remember the topics for his ethics essay to distract himself, but all that does is make his breaths come faster, his mind go a little more hazy around the edges. He doesn’t want to think about philosophy.

Uni’s making him not want to think about anything.

“Hey, you okay?” says Phil.

He forces his eyes open. Phil’s sitting across from him now, his bag on the table. There’s a coffee-coloured stain on his shirt.

Dan helped put it there.

“I can’t fail this fucking class,” he says. “You can’t let me fail.”

Phil frowns. “Why would I let you fail?”

Dan shrugs, motioning vaguely towards Phil’s chest. He’s still not breathing properly.

“Oh, this?” Phil’s smile quirks wider, happier, a little more crooked. “It’s nothing. I’ll get my mum to wash it tonight and it’ll be fine.”

He sounds so genuine that Dan manages to stop jittering for a moment.

“Now, tell me about yourself?” says Phil. “What are you studying?”

Dan manages half a smile back. “Philosophy,” he says. “Since English clearly isn’t my strong suit.”

Phil laughs, and the tightness in Dan’s chest starts to fade.

\---

“Did you get a chance to meet your tutor?” asks Nathan after the next tutorial.

Dan’s hand is hovering on the doorknob. Everyone else has already left, and part of him wonders why he didn’t rush out of his seat to avoid this conversation. He turns around, smiling.

“Yes,” he says. “Thank you for arranging it.”

“Of course,” says Nathan. “Do you think he’ll be able to help you?”

His smile grows a little more genuine, then. He tries not to think of Phil telling him about the time he forgot to study for his first exam because he was too busy binge-watching Buffy for the too-manieth time. Dan had told him, in turn, about the time he forgot to study for A-levels because of Mortal Kombat.

“Yeah, I think so.”

Nathan just nods, and doesn’t say another word as Dan slips out the door.

\---

“So I looked at your essay,” says Phil as he sits down at their next meeting.

He booked a room in the English department this time, one with big windows open into the hallway that make Dan want to squirm in his seat every time someone walks by. Not that it matters what the English profs think of him. He’s probably never going to come back after he’s done this course.

“And?”

Phil smiles. He drops Dan’s essay, annotated in red ink, onto the table between them and his backpack onto the floor. There’s a little Yoshi plushie hanging off the handle.

Seeing it eases just a bit of Dan’s anxiety.

“I think you overanalyze.”

“That’s what Nathan said, too,” says Dan. “I, uh, don’t really know what it means.”

Phil chuckles, but it doesn’t seem mocking. “It is kinda vague, huh?”

Dan nods. He reaches forward, grabbing the essay to read some of the notes Phil made, written in messier handwriting around Nathan’s.

“You’re a philosophy major, right?” says Phil.

He hums. “Yup.”

“That could explain it.”

“Oy!” Dan looks up. Phil’s leaning forward in his seat, grinning. “Is that a jab at my major?”

Phil lifts his hands, hitting himself in the forehead as he does, swiping his fringe away from his eyes. He laughs, and his tongue pokes out between his teeth, and something goes tight in Dan’s chest.

He tries not to think about it too much.

“Not at all,” says Phil. “Or maybe a little. I don’t know. You just seem like someone prone to overthinking things. But that’s not a bad thing.”

He seems sincere. Dan can’t bring himself to be upset about it.

His finger drifts along the edge of his essay as he looks back down.

“Fine, then tell me about this overanalyzing thing.”

\---

By their fifth session, Dan knows more about Phil.

He knows about his schedule, which leaves his Tuesday afternoons free at the same time as Dan’s are and usually has them booking their meetings then. He knows he plays Mario games, like Dan does, and grew up playing something called Bubble Bobble that had Dan teasing him about being old.

Phil’s favourite type of book is horror, Dan had learned last week, after wondering if it was the type of story they were analyzing that made the class so hard.

“I couldn’t have done lit,” Phil had said. “All the character-driven plots would have driven me insane.”

Dan had bit at his lip, offered a grin. “I like them,” he’d said. “Even if I over-analyze them.”

Phil had nudged their feet together under the table, back at the library that time. “That’s why philosophy’s perfect for you,” he’d said, smiling.

He’s smiling again today, over the edge of his syntax textbook, as Dan highlights passages in a short story called  _ The Yellow Wallpaper  _ they were asked to read. Dan has to force himself to stare at the text instead of the way Phil’s eyes seem to shine in the too-bright light of the English Department.

Dan drops the highlighter when he’s finished reading. Phil’s textbook is already closed and resting on his lap when he looks up.

“You did well,” he says.

“You haven’t even looked over my work,” says Dan.

“I saw what you were doing.” There’s a hint of laughter in Phil’s eyes as he says it. He leans over the table, closer to Dan, and tugs the text towards him. “What’d you think of the ending?”

Dan groans, letting his body collapse onto the table. “Now you’re just  _ asking  _ me to overanalyze.”

Phil laughs, warm and happy, and knocks their knees together under the table. They’re sitting closer today.

That’s another thing that’s changed over the past few weeks.

“Unless you come up with a true conspiracy theory,” he says, “I really don’t think you can overanalyze this ending. It’s pretty abstract.”

“Pretty? It doesn’t even make sense.”

He glares at the story, groans, and presses his head into his elbow to ignore it, just for a moment.

Then Phil’s hand is settling on his shoulder, squeezing gently.

“You don’t have to write an essay on this one, remember?” he says. “You just have to understand it enough for a quiz.”

Dan smiles even though Phil can’t see it.

Phil’s hand stays on his shoulder until Dan lifts his head and gets back to work.

\---

Their sixth meeting is back in the library.

Phil shows up with his backpack on his shoulders and two cups of coffee in his hands. He sets one, the one with Dan’s name scribbled across the side, in front of Dan, grinning. 

“Do you like caramel macchiatos?”

Dan reaches for it. The cup is warm against his palm, the drink too hot when he takes a sip, but Dan smiles at the sweetness anyway. Of his drink, and, he realizes a moment after the feeling settles in his chest, of Phil, too.

“Yeah,” he says. “I like them.”

Phil’s smile only widens.

He takes the seat next to Dan, humming around a sip of his own drink as their knees brush together under the table.

“Good,” he says. “It’s getting chilly outside, you have to take care of yourself.”

Dan nods, presses his leg back against Phil’s. “You didn’t have to.”

“I wanted to,” says Phil. “Besides, I have, uh, YouTube money to spend.”

His cheeks go a little pink, and Dan knows he should be taking out his essay outline to have Phil help him look it over, but he doesn’t want to. Not when Phil’s scratching at the black ink scribbled on the side of his cup with the tip of his fingernail, staring at the tabletop. Not when his leg is still pressed against Dan’s.

“You do YouTube?”

Phil’s chuckle is quiet, almost embarrassed. “Just a bit. It doesn’t actually make me enough money for Starbucks, but it’s fun,” he says.

“I do too,” says Dan, and Phil looks up, eyes wide. “Not enough to make any money, but it’s, uh fun. Yeah.”

“That’s awesome.” Phil’s smile has spread across his whole face again. “What kind of videos do you make? Would I like them?”

“Um, how do you feel about self deprecating humour and attempts at self-analysis?”

His gaze flits over Dan’s fringe, over his hoodie. “Let me guess, you went through an emo phase, too?”

“I’m not sure if I resent or appreciate your use of the past tense,” says Dan.

Phil laughs so much his tongue sticks out between his teeth and his shoulder presses against Dan’s.

Dan has to try very hard not to let warmth bubble up in his chest again, without coffee to blame this time.

\---

They meet up at Starbucks the eighth time.

Dan has another caramel macchiato in his hands, his final essay laid out across the table between them. Phil has a croissant that has his fingers a little buttery, so he smudges oil on the paper whenever he points out an error. He picks it apart and pops bites into his mouth, grinning around them as Dan marks the recommendations in red pen.

“There’s not much to correct this time,” says Phil.

He still has a little bit of food in his mouth. Dan thinks he should probably be more disgusted than he is.

“I already corrected most of it,” he says, smiling to hide the warmth he feels in his cheeks. 

Phil shrugs. “Still, you’re learning how to write for English instead of Philosophy,” he says. “It’s getting easier, isn’t it?”

The corner of his mouth is quirked up, his smile crooked. Dan doesn’t realize he’s drawn a slash of red ink across the page until Phil’s eyes crinkle with a quiet giggle.

“End of the semester getting to you?”

His foot nudges Dan’s. He blames how small the two-person Starbucks tables are, wedged into a corner like this with their long legs. It doesn’t keep his chest from going warm, though. He’s grown used to that, when Phil says something nice and he feels his whole body react to it.

“A bit,” says Dan. “It’s not even done yet. We’re just getting a break then it continues.”

“With exams,” says Phil. His nose crinkles, and Dan’s stomach goes tight. “It’s pretty much a study break.”

“I’m just gonna procrastinate studying until the last day, I already know it.”

Phil’s smile softens then. He takes another bite of his croissant, swallowing it with a sip of coffee, letting the silence linger. Dan takes a sip of his drink to fill it, to ignore the way his heart is suddenly pounding for no reason whatsoever.

“Maybe I could remind you to study?” says Phil. His cheeks have gone pink. He’s fidgeting over the table so much Dan’s fairly certain he’s going to tear his bread to shreds. “You know, if you give me your number.”

Dan wants to quip that they’d probably get too distracted talking to actually study, but his throat goes tight before he can. He hands over his phone, and tries not to let Phil see his smile. 

Tries not to admit he’ll miss this, once his English class is over.

Phil texts him, and grins when Dan’s phone vibrates on the tabletop. He doesn’t go to grab it at first, but Phil keeps staring at him, all wide eyes and expectation.

Dan can’t help but smile when he reads the messages.

_ Hi it’s Phil ^.^ I was thinking we should meet up after your exam _

_ if you want I mean _

_ no pressure _

He grins as he types back:  _ ill text u when i get out _

Phil clicks his tongue. “Grammar, Dan. You’ll never get your grade up like this.”

Dan’s laugh rumbles as they both set their phones down to finish their drinks, to look over the rest of Dan’s paper. 

Their legs are still brushing under the table.

\---

They text over winter break.

There’s a conversation on the train about whether all the snow is melting as he gets further south. And another where Phil asks about his childhood bedroom, for whatever reason. Dan sends him a picture of Bangy just so he can sit down on the sofa and imagine the way Phil’s eyes gleam when he’s happy.

He gets a message on Christmas morning that comes with a picture of Phil in his pyjamas, hugging a gift box to his chest. 

Dan smiles so wide his mum asks who he’s texting in the lilted voice that makes his cheeks burn red. He hopes Phil can’t tell in the photo he sends back.

They do talk about schoolwork, sometimes, in timed study sessions. Dan’s pretty sure he’s too distracted to remember anything about Parfit or Kant or Plato, but he can’t bring himself to care. Not when he needs to catch up on studying, alone late at night, and not when Phil admits studying together is a little distracting, too.

One time, Phil makes a comment about how they’ll need to play their new games together sometime.

Another, Dan insinuates that Phil will see his room back at uni, and Phil doesn’t protest. 

And there’s a text on New Years, at midnight, that makes Dan’s whole body go warm and giddy, just a little bit of alcohol in his stomach and a lot of thoughts he probably shouldn’t have in his head.

He’s dreading finals when break ends, but he smiles the whole train ride home.

\---

They meet up outside Starbucks after the final.

Or, well, between Starbucks and the lecture hall when Dan wrote the test, because Phil’s walking towards him, bag slung over one shoulders, bobble hat on his head. 

Dan’s steps are bouncy. His shoulders feel light, his bag filled with only his wallet and pencil case, a whole semester of work falling away. He doesn’t mean to when he reaches out, wraps an arm around Phil’s shoulders, but Phil’s arm curls at his waist and he’s pretty sure it’s okay.

Phil’s grinning. His cheeks are rosy, the tip of his nose red with winter cold. Dan smoothes a bare hand across his cheek. His heart is racing with the knowledge that he can, that Phil isn’t flinching away.

And he kisses him, soft and warm and grateful. 

Phil kisses back.

His whole body feels warm when he pulls away, even as the wind sweeps under his jacket. His cheeks, he knows, are bright red. So are Phil’s, though.

“Shit,” says Dan.

“What?”

“Didn’t mean to do that.”

The corner of Phil’s mouth quirks, eyes falling to the ground between them. His blush blooms up his cheeks, pinkening the tips of his ears more than the cold already had. Dan’s not sure if it’s intentional or caused by nerves when Phil squeezes his hip.

“I’m glad you did,” says Phil. His voice is shaky. He draws away slowly, tucking his hands into his pockets and tilting his head so the bobble on his hat flops to the side. “Still want coffee?”

“As long as you’re not going to tutor me again.”

Phil laughs and leads the way to Starbucks. 

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks goes to Insectbah for beta'ing this for me. Come say hi on tumblr [@huphilpuffs](huphilpuffs.tumblr.com).


End file.
